We are delighted to welcome author Kerry Schafer to Omnimystery News today.
Kerry begins a new paranormal mystery series with Dead Before Dying (Diversion Books; February 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with her to talk more about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your new series character.
Photo provided courtesy of
Kerry Schafer
Kerry Schafer: Meet Maureen Keslyn, Paranormal Investigator. She's a strongly independent, feisty, opinionated woman, made vulnerable by a nearly lethal on-the-job injury and her upcoming sixtieth birthday. What could make for a better conflict in the character arc than a strong character facing an existential crisis while having to use all of her wits, experience, and skill to save not only herself but the people around her? Besides, Maureen gets to say a lot of the things I only think, and that makes her great fun to write.
OMN: How do you expect her to develop over the course of the series?
KS: I tend to write what I love to read. My favorite mystery writers are Martha Grimes, Elizabeth George, and Elizabeth Peters. I am in love with Grimes' Richard Jury. Yes, I'll admit it — I swoon over this somewhat melancholy detective as surely as do the women in the stories who meet him! But it's not just Richard I love. Melrose Plant, Richard's engaging sidekick, is also wonderful. I read (and re-read!) for that as much as I do for the mystery. So, yes — I expect Maureen and her supporting cast to have plenty of opportunity to learn and change over the course of the series.
OMN: Into which genre would you place Dead Before Dying?
KS: I told my agent not so long ago that I am the Queen of Misfit Books. I was joking, but there is some truth to this. No matter how hard I try, I seem to be incapable of writing anything that stays neatly within a particular genre. Dead Before Dying is a paranormal mystery thriller with a hint of cozy and a healthy dash of horror. I have mixed feelings about labels. They serve a purpose, in that they help us find what we're looking for, but they also can prevent readers from finding books they might love.
OMN: Tell us something about the book that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
KS: The publisher synopsis is very, very quiet about the geriatric vampire inhabiting Shadow Valley Manor. This is probably because Dead Before Dying is not a vampire book, per se, and we don't want to be misleading. That said, Gerry Vermeer, toothless, arthritic, and wheelchair bound, is a vampire of the non-sparkly variety. I'm very fond of Gerry.
OMN: When starting a new book, which comes first: the characters or the storyline?
KS: Characters nearly always come first for me. In this book, Gerry Vermeer was the creative impetus of the book. I was playing around with some friends on Twitter (we may or may not have been making fun of vampire books and movies) and somebody said, "What if there was a geriatric vampire, who was old and miserable and couldn't die?" And right there the initial idea for the book and the title came into being. Maureen showed up later, but when she did she took over and rewrote the book for me. She's like that.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
KS: I don't know if it's possible to write things that have no basis at all in what I know, but my characters are never based on any one individual. I tried that once, and although my model was one of the most fascinating men I've ever met, the character turned out flat and boring and had to be completely revamped. That said, I work in a medical clinic, and I used to work in mental health as a crisis worker, and there are ideas everywhere in both of those fields. So I might pick up a phrase or scenario from one patient, and a weird little idiosyncrasy from another, but then I need to heavily alter that for confidentiality purposes. I always pay some attention to personality theory to make sure my characters stay consistent and true to themselves. Whenever I can, I draw on my own experiences, particularly for emotional reactions and physical sensations. There's a scene in Dead Before Dying where Maureen stumbles across the body of somebody she cares for. I once went to check on a friend and found him dead, so I used those memories and emotions while shaping that scene.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
KS: When I was in crisis mental health I worked closely with law enforcement and spent a lot of time in the Emergency Department and the local jail, so those scenarios are familiar to me. I've also worked in a nursing home, so Shadow Valley Manor, although that facility is outside the confines of your average care facility, was also easy to create. My internet search history has probably got me on some homeland security watch list, particularly for the government secrets I was digging up while creating the history of Shadow Valley Manor and the Paranormal Research Facility. It was alarming to discover the known experiments that have been committed on an unsuspecting general populace. I shudder to think what's still locked away in the top secret files. Right now, I'm working on setting up a tour of the local funeral parlor and hoping to get in on an autopsy. Last summer I attended Writer's Police Academy, which is a fabulous experience taught by working police, fire, and forensic professionals.
OMN: Tell us more about the book's setting.
KS: I like to write books in rural settings. Dead Before Dying is set in a fictional town called Shadow Valley, somewhere in northeastern Washington, which is where I live. I think it's the perfect setting to host both paranormal and clandestine government activity. There actually was a government installation just outside of town during the cold war. A lot of those facilities did have underground chambers and passageways, so it's reasonable that the converted building might just have a secret laboratory in the basement.
OMN: What's next for you?
KS: I'm working on the sequel to Dead Before Dying now, and I have an idea I love for the third book in the series. On another front, writer friend Alex Hughes and I recently tried to collaborate on a horror novel. This didn't go so well — she's a thorough outliner and I'm a bit of a pantser — but we've agreed to each write the book the way we think it should be, as an experiment. Depending on results, we might just put it out there on Amazon for our readers. My alter-ego, Kerry Anne King, has a women's fiction novel releasing in March. And I've got a head full of other books I want to write.
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Kerry Schafer writes fantasy with its teeth sunk into reality, mystery that delves into the paranormal, and women's fiction that embraces the dark and twisty realms of humanity.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at KerrySchafer.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Dead Before Dying by Kerry Schafer
A Maureen Keslyn Mystery
Publisher: Diversion Books
In this supernatural thriller, shot through with biting wit, Maureen Keslyn checks herself in to Shadow Valley Manor to recuperate and rehabilitate from her last job. There, she runs afoul of the stern director and makes friends with some of the other residents, mostly older, all harboring either a secret or a grudge. With secrets of her own, like why she has her own Federal Agent checking up on her, and how she injured herself in the first place, Maureen fits right in, even as she sticks out like a thorn.
But Shadow Valley isn't just for rest — Maureen is working undercover, seeking to find and eradicate whatever forces are picking off the residents (and staff) at a grisly clip. With her resources dwindling one death at a time, and unnatural forces seething to rise up once more, Maureen's experience fighting the supernatural will be her only hope to destroy a clever and powerful evil — and her only chance at surviving it. She'll need people as paranoid as she is — from the sheriff, to the undertaker's daughter, to a cook whose knife skills in the kitchen could prove deadly out of it — if she is going to bring rest to the weary, and peace to the dead …
— Dead Before Dying by Kerry Schafer
